Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him

There’s no question Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transitional period. The company is planning to launch a brand new product line based on a brand new operating system within the next 12 months, and even though the first device born out of RIM’s new QNX OS was impressive in some ways, it was incomplete. There still is a chance for RIM to deliver some really interesting competitive products, but time is quickly running out, as we have written time and time again. The thing is, RIM has always been a company controlled by two people — Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. For all the things that have worked, they have missed the boat countless times and we’re now seeing the results.

We have received an open letter to Mike and Jim from a high-level RIM employee (whose identity we have verified), and in an amazingly honest and passionate plea, this letter gives fascinating insights into what RIM must fix, and fast. RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read the open letter in its entirety after the break.

P.S. If you’re an employee of RIM and want to send us your thoughts and feelings on the company, you can send them to us via email or leave a comment below.

UPDATE: Following this post, RIM issued an official response to the letter below. The company’s full response can be viewed here.

UPDATE 2: BGR has exclusively published two additional letters from RIM employees. They can both be viewed here.

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To the RIM Senior Management Team:

I have lost confidence.

While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.

Mike and Jim, please take the time to really absorb and digest the content of this letter because it reflects the feeling across a huge percentage of your employee base. You have many smart employees, many that have great ideas for the future, but unfortunately the culture at RIM does not allow us to speak openly without having to worry about the career-limiting effects.

Before I get into the meat of the matter, I will say I am not part of a large group of bitter employees wishing to embarrass us. Rather, I believe these points need to be heard and I desperately want RIM to regain its position as a successful industry leader. Our carriers, distributors, alliance partners, enterprise customers, and our loyal end users all want the same thing… for BlackBerry to once again be leading the pack.

We are in the middle of major “transition” and things have never been more chaotic. Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time. We urge you to make bold decisions about our organisational structure, about our culture and most importantly our products.

While we anxiously wait to see the details of the streamlining plan, here are some suggestions:

1) Focus on the End User experience

Let’s obsess about what is best for the end user. We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice — the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work. Android has a major weakness — it will always lack the simplicity and elegance that comes with end-to-end device software, middleware and hardware control. We really have a great opportunity to build something new and “uniquely BlackBerry” with the QNX platform.

Let’s start an internal innovation revival with teams focused on what users will love instead of chasing “feature parity” and feature differentiation for no good reason (Adobe Flash being a major example). When was the last time we pushed out a significant new experience or feature that wasn’t already on other platforms?

Rather than constantly mocking iPhone and Android, we should encourage key decision makers across the board to use these products as their primary device for a week or so at a time — yes, on Exchange! This way we can understand why our users are switching and get inspiration as to how we can build our next-gen products even better! It’s incomprehensible that our top software engineers and executives aren’t using or deeply familiar with our competitor’s products.

2) Recruit Senior SW Leaders & enable decision-making

I’m going to say what everyone is thinking… We need some heavy hitters at RIM when it comes to software management. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, no one is making or can make critical decisions, all the while everyone is working crazy hours and still far behind. We are demotivated. Just look at who our major competitors are: Apple, Google & Microsoft. These are three of the biggest and most talented software companies on the planet. Then take a look at our software leadership teams in terms of what they have delivered and their past experience prior to RIM… It says everything.

3) Cut projects to the bone.

There is a serious need to consolidate our focus to just a handful of projects. Period.

We need to be disciplined here. We can’t afford any more initiatives based on carrier requests to squeeze out slightly more volume. Again, back to point #1, focus on the end users. They are the ones making both consumer & enterprise purchase decisions.

Strategy is often in the things you decide not to do.

On that note, we simply must stop shipping incomplete products that aren’t ready for the end user. It is hurting our brand tremendously. It takes guts to not allow a product to launch that may be 90% ready with a quarter end in sight, but it will pay off in the long term.

Look at Apple in 1997 for tips here. I really want you to watch this video because it has never been more relevant. It is our friend Steve Jobs in 97 and it may as well be you speaking to RIM employees and partners today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY

4) Developers, not Carriers can now make or break us

We urgently need to invest like we never have before in becoming developer friendly. The return will be worth every cent. There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true — BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.

Developing for BlackBerry is painful, and despite what you’ve been told, things haven’t really changed that much since Jamie Murai’s letter. Our SDK / development platform is like a rundown 1990’s Ford Explorer. Then there’s Apple, which has a shiny new BMW M3… just such a pleasure to drive. Developers want and need quality tools.

If we create great tools, we will see great work. Offer shit tools and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see shit apps.

The truth is, no one in RIM dares to tell management how bad our tools still are. Even our closest dev partners do their best to say it politely, but they will never bite the hand that feeds them. The solution? Recruit serious talent, buy SDK/API specialist companies, throw a truckload of money at it… Let’s do whatever it takes, and quickly!

5) Need for serious marketing punch to create end user desire

25 million iPad users don’t care that it doesn’t have Flash or true multitasking, so why make that a focus in our campaigns? I’ll answer that for you: it’s because that’s all that differentiates our products and its lazy marketing. I’ve never seen someone buy product B because it has something product A doesn’t have. People buy product B because they want and lust after product B.

Also an important note regarding our marketing: a product’s technical superiority does not equal desire, and therefore sales… How many Linux laptops are getting sold? How did Betamax go? My mother wants an iPad and iPhone because it is simple and appeals to her. Powerful multitasking doesn’t.

BlackBerry Messenger has been our standout, yet we wasted our marketing on strange stories from a barber shop to a horse wrangler. I promise you, this did nothing to help us in the mind of the average consumer.

We need an inventive and engaging campaign that focuses on what we are about. People buy into a brand / product not just because of features, but because of what it stands for and what it delivers to them. People don’t buy “what you do,” people buy “why you do it.” Take 3 minutes to watch the this video starting from the 2min mark: http://youtu.be/qp0HIF3SfI4

6) No Accountability – Canadians are too nice

RIM has a lot of people who underperform but still stay in their roles. No one is accountable. Where is the guy responsible for the 9530 software? Still with us, still running some important software initiative. We will never achieve excellence with this culture. Just because someone may have been a loyal RIM employee for 7 years, it doesn’t mean they are the best Manager / Director / VP for that role. It’s time to change the culture to deliver or move on and get out. We have far too many people in critical roles that fit this description. I can hear the cheers of my fellow employees now.

7) The press and analysts are pissing you off. Don’t snap. Now is the time for humility with a dash of paranoia.

The public’s questions about dual-CEOs are warranted. The partnership is not broken, but on the ground level, it is not efficient. Maybe we need our Eric Schmidt reign period.

Yes, four years ago we beat Microsoft when everyone said Windows Mobile with Direct Push in Exchange would kill us. It didn’t… in fact we grew stronger.

However, overconfidence clouds good decision-making. We missed not boldly reacting to the threat of iPhone when we saw it in January over four years ago. We laughed and said they are trying to put a computer on a phone, that it won’t work. We should have made the QNX-like transition then. We are now 3-4 years too late. That is the painful truth… it was a major strategic oversight and we know who is responsible.

Jim, in referring to our current transition recently said: “No other technology company other than Apple has successfully transitioned their platform. It’s almost never done, and it’s way harder than you realize. This transition is where tech companies go to die.”

To avoid this death, perhaps it is time to seriously consider a new, fresh thinking, experienced CEO. There is no shame in no longer being a CEO. Mike, you could focus on innovation. Jim, you could focus on our carriers/customers… They are our lifeblood.

8) Democratise. Engage and interact with your employees — please!

Reach out to all employees asking them on how we can make RIM better. Encourage input from ground-level teams—without repercussions—to seek out honest feedback and really absorb it.

Lastly, we’re all reading the news and many are extremely nervous, especially when we see people get fired. We need an injection of confidence: share your strategy and ask us for support. The headhunters have already started circling and we are at risk of losing our best people.

Now would be a great time to internally re-brand and re-energize the workplace. For example, rename the company to just “BlackBerry” to signify our new focus on one QNX product line. We should also address issues surrounding making RIM an enjoyable workplace. Some of our offices feel like Soviet-era government workplaces.

The timing is perfect to seriously evaluate at our position and make these major changes. We can do it!

I’m at lost with RIM. I enjoy my BlackBerry. But i dislike how there’s no option for any ‘fun’ on this device. It has incredible potential but nothing that really makes it standout other than BBM – which I don’t even use! Cmon, CEO’s of RIM. Get your heads out of your asses.

b.nimble

Having been an early adapter (since 1996) of Blackberry phones and still a loyal BB user, the tsunami of bad news about RIM lately is very painful to read. Unfortunately for RIM, most of these blogs and prognostications are right on the money – RIM is in deep dodo, and the 2 people at the top seem to be clueless on how to right their listing ship. They have been hit by 2 icebergs (Iphone and Android) one after another and they are sinking fast, but the executives do not seem to know it or they have their collective heads stuck in the sand. We have seen this movie before, it’s called the Nortel Nightmare, but the unraveling this time is in warp speed mode.

Paul P.

I think that BlackBerry’s response really says everything you need to
know about the company. Someone takes the time to write them a
comprehensive, thought-out letter detailing major issues (s)he feels
exists within the company (with step-by-step instructions on how to
improve it all!), and their response is to turn their nose up at the
fact that it was written anonymously and tell us about their “excitement
and optimism.”

“RIM’s management team takes these challenges seriously and is actively
addressing the situation.” That’s the kind of boilerplate response I
expect when I submit an error report or return an item of clothing, not
when the management of a major company is trying to build on the
perception that its in touch with its consumer base. If you can’t
demonstrate in writing that you give constructive criticism – anonymous
or not – any thoughtful reflection, I don’t see how you can presume to
suggest that you’re “more commited than ever” to your customers.

Enact

I could not agree more. I am not a RIM employee, nor a very savvy technology person…but I am a management consultant and end user. The general, cliche and lame response from management lowers my confidence and interest in RIM products significantly. Wow, what a mis-step.

Nonsense

Hi
believe me the way they treat their employees is dramatic, mobing, mass layoff
the managers are good in downrating their team but of course you are not able to evaluating your manager they are not interested in what they are doing wrong
“this is not Fair”

and they celebrate themselves as heroes and are not interested in the respronse of the market – they are the best

Nonsense

Hi
believe me the way they treat their employees is dramatic, mobing, mass layoff
the managers are good in downrating their team but of course you are not able to evaluating your manager they are not interested in what they are doing wrong
“this is not Fair”

and they celebrate themselves as heroes and are not interested in the respronse of the market – they are the best

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZX7I3VN423YBFEWTEQOQ5JR5ME Retro

“P.S. If you’re an employee of RIM and want to send us your thoughts and feelings on the company, you can send them to us via email or leave a comment below.”

Geller, you’re a paparazzi like scumbag.

Guest

As another RIM employee, I have a few comments.

User experience is vital. In some ways the BlackBerry interface does
this a lot better than other platforms, but there is a lot of room for
improvement before we are as good as Apple. I agree that far too much
emphasis is put on what carriers want, rather than what users want.
Multitasking, a real-time OS, and Flash are good but only because they
make it possible to provide a better user experience. Build on the
foundation.

The senior software leaders are a bigger problem than you say. They are
the ones who have treated good programmers as disposable, let co-op
students design key protocols and APIs, and surrendered their vision to
Product Managers who simply follow carrier requests. They are smart
enough that they can’t be easily BSed by programmers, but not smart
enough to know a bad API and that is a real problem because bad APIs
have made the BlackBerry platform a complete dog to develop for. Just
like people in RIM should be using other smart phones, they should be
writing applications for other smart phones and asking why it is so much
easier to write for an Android or iPhone.

Shipping things early is an interesting problem. I agree that like many
tech companies RIM ships things before they are ready, and this is
starting to make RIM look bad when compared with Apple and Google.
Sometimes this causes problems, but sometimes it gets things to market
quickly. The problem is that RIM doesn’t recognize when they have
shipped a beta version. You say that BlackBerry Messenger is an
outstanding product, but clearly you’ve never worked on it because it is
proof of concept that was shipped and some of the fundamental problems
with its structure have caused nothing but problems for years. Shipping
it quickly is a good idea. Understanding the shortcomings well enough to
fix them before they cause problems is management.

You are right that QNX was a great move and it should have happened years ago.

Snapping at the press is ridiculous. In the BBC interview Mike L might
not have wanted to talk about RIM’s security problems, but the purpose
of an interview is so that a journalist can the questions that customers
want. Mike should have had a good answer to that question. It isn’t
even a difficult question to answer since governments want to monitor
all smart phones and RIM is only in the press because we have such good
security that our customers that governments need our help. Storming off
was just pathetic and gave the public a view into what working for Mike
L is like.

Listening to employees is important, and this is a big one. In their
response RIM says that it’s difficult to respond to an anonymous
comment, but the reality is that RIM has far too many yes-men. Telling
Mike or Jim that something is a bad idea is a career limiting move and
all of the VPs and C-levels know this and carefully shield them from any
other opinions or bad news. RIM does solicit employee opinions, but then ignores
them, tells the employees that they are wrong, or argues that RIM is in
line with the industry standard. Aiming for average is not the road to
excellence.

You are wrong about rebranding. No customer is going to be fooled by
rebranding, and the employees are going to see it for the hollow gesture
that it is.

James Gale

Good post, and you largely confirm what I suspected.

Imo, shipping software too early shouldn’t always be a huge problem, as long as there are good feedback/improvement systems in place and an effective way to push out new revisions quickly. Whilst normally this would apply to SaaS, I don’t see why mobile software can’t be treated the same way.

However, too-early releases or not, I’ve never seen RIM bring anything to market quickly. Their devices have been a full generation behind competitors for as long as I can remember. There’s also been an irritating habit of pictures/leaks of new devices/software sometimes YEARS before GA.

I could write a long list of RIM complaints (from an outsiders perspective), but it would probably be counter-productive, and might feel a bit shoot-the-messenger-ish.

I hope that the board see fit to replace senior-management, preferably with somebody capable from the inside who understands the culture and how to change it for the better.

Chosskar

What I think is that RIM must follow the steps of Microsoft and what they do with their new OS Windows Phone 7, they used to have Windows Mobile and well it was a shit! But they came out with this completely new OS, and yes they dont have the success of iOS and Android because they arrived late, but they accept all theirs mistakes and did something new with their new graphic interface called Metro and also they have been very friendly with the developers. WP7 now has 25,000 apps! And is something really big because the OS came out on november of 2010! Well i hope the new OS7 be a good move for RIM and they take better decisions on the future. By the way im a Blackberry user

Unfortunate

“Unchecked Power Corrupts , Absolute Power Absolutely Corrupts!”

As a former Corporate Exec, who was also very passionate about the company I worked for who in the end who sold out , all of our efforts after achieving success through making Operational Recommendations for Change that made us agile as we continued to compete and beat the competition with Rigid Flexibility affirming and creating an environment where our greatest assets were our employes who exhibited the skills of influencing without authority thats what what made us different. Packaged out as the “take over was to put us out of Business”. Success without passionate humility, constantly revisiting values , and maintaining Integrity with go the way of “Unchecked Power Corrupts , Absolute Power Absolutely Corrupts!”

http://twitter.com/CallahanCPBN Jack Callahan

Blackberry/RIM insight

Junkymoe

I’d like to mention one more issue that BlackBerry users have to deal with, especially abroad. The Blackberry service provided by companies such as Etisalat (in the Middle East) is EXTREMELY SLOW, while the internet service provided by the same company for the iPhone or Android devices is lightening fast. This is putting off a lot of new potential Blackberry customers, and RIM should take this fact into consideration: a connected device is ONLY as good as its connection, and right now, the connection is quite … shitty.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JEWD5DZW227XZOESL66JC4TBJI Mia Kline

I paid $32.67 for a XBOX 360 and my mom got a 17 inch Toshiba laptop for $94.83 being delivered to our house tomorrow by FedEX. I will never again pay expensive retail prices at stores. I even sold a 46 inch HDTV to my boss for $650 and it only cost me $52.78 to get. Here is the website we using to get all this stuff, LiveCent.com

Stanstheman

The entire problem at RIM appears to be it’s corporate culture. Look at the culture engendered by great leadership in the successful companies and you will understand how it can address every problem brought to light in this letter. RIM needs new leadership, focused on a very inclusive corporate culture. The talent pool probably already exists within the company and it simply needs this new and sincere “breath of fresh air”.

The RIM co-CEO’s should read the story of Radio Shack when the owned the early Z-80 market and then came their proprietary operating system in an attempt to own the software aftermarket. Hmmmmmmm…….. when was the last time you heard about a TRS-80. .

Entrepr

Sounds like the sort of thing many employees feel about the large corporates they work for

http://www.bbkita.com/ BBkita – Tips Blackberry

It is really a bad news. I don’t care whether it’s a fake letter or not, the letter should be taken care seriously by RIM. I wish all the best for RIM. Keep up the good work!

James Gale

RIM’s last good phone was the Bold 9000, and I wasn’t even sure how much better that was than the 7130g.

Given the whole BlackBerry point of difference was superiority at e-mail and messaging, that each generation of phone since has been less usable than the last should speak volumes.

A change of management looks about due.

Anonymous

the 9700 with os6 is pretty awesome. apart from the facebook app.

Anonymous

great letter. I am shocked that there needed to be such emphasis on the corporate culture: the problem of negative career repercussions of speaking out about things which are technically poor. contrast this with the feedback structures of the most successful comanpies, including Microsoft, Google and Apple. It’s not personal, it’s code! This more than anything – an inability to tap the mental resources of employees and trigger the virtuous circle of innovation, morale and employee retention for me is the single thing that signifies RIM are doomed – or at least a takeover target.

an example: facebook for os6 is possibly the worst app I have ever used. it’s from the 90s. the early 90s. such a core app for RIM’s huge base of consumer users. For it to be so poor speaks volumes.

Zildjian71

One thing I think is important to remember about RIM and their executives is that they are historically European by decent and that makes them Imperialist by nature. It is not to make excuses for them but they come by their “Let them eat Cake” mentality honestly. Thier culture doesnt allow them to hear the input of the lower cast let alone incorporate it into any form of decision making process. When Daimler-Mercedes adopted the lean production philosophy they had to tear down the vertical stacks of idle inventory that tied up rescources that represented the imperialistic philosophy of power at the time. Imperialism still rules at RIM.

James Gale

o_O

Substring

I used to have the BlackBerry Storm and I was so upset when RIM failed to update the Storm 2 to be a TRUE TOUCH SCREEN device. That’s why I left and bought the Samsung Galaxy S phone instead.

RIM failed to recognize the market need and too contended with their ancient keyboard and trackball form factor. THEY DID NOT JUST MISS THE BOAT BUT HAS MISSED THE ENTIRE FLEET!!! RIM also failed to realize that, although their emails are great, email is only A SMALL PART of the whole mobile experience. It is NOT important enough for people to stay with RIM with their inferior devices.

I think it is too little too late for RIM, and I think they will soon be bought by someone who wants to compete with the “Big Boys” in the mobile device space.

MichaelTnt

Can’t RIM just make one Android phone with a good keyboard and super high res screen, port their common BB apps, give an App Store & work on their other phones? Don’t commit to Android, but use it in theirvmbvbbbb transition?

Xeliax

The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford ! Oh well, at least Robert Ford told his name to everyone ! You don’t go out there and bash the company for who you work. Company = people. YOU are the company !! YOU, high level or not, are part of it. YOU make it run…. not the top CEO’s and executives. If you don’t like it, leave it ! It’s like if you’re slamming on yourself. You think this type of letter will change anything ? You think us, the readers, will go inside and shake RIM ? Why don’t you send an open email in YOUR company and face the consequences of your thoughts ?? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have been that horrible if sent to the right people… or written positively and sent to many employees. I was in a shitty company and decided to move up and become manager to take things in my hands. Easier said than done. But at least have you tried ? I can’t believe this open letter… you must be young and inexperienced.

Nick

IMHO RIM is on broughted time. RIM products in the last 2 years are neither innovative or exciting. They are just coasting on old tech at this point. Blackberry is the new Palm. You might see Blackberry(like Palm) on a new phone post RIM at some point in the future but it will never be a high end or have to have device again. That is unless management gets a clue. Fat chance for fat cats!

Bob Sugar

Jerry McGure! Who’s with me?

Geezermobile

Wow! This is beautiful – thoughtful, concise and very much to the point without being bitter and accusing.

As an Apple user I can tell you that you are exactly right – my Mac works like it’s supposed to – period. And I love it and won’t buy anything else.

Also you’re dead on about developers making or breaking you. People LOVE apps and LOVE making them – make it easy and fun for them and you’ll get slammed with more ideas than you can possibly imagine.

I don’t know who you are nor do I work for/own stock in RIM but I just want to stand up and cheer for whoever wrote this letter and wish him/her the best